On a balmy summer afternoon, Dave “Mudcat” Saunders sits in the shade of his porch in Roanoke, Va., with a tall cup of iced tea, a highlighter and a copy of I Heard My Country Calling. That’s the new book by former U.S. Sen. Jim Webb, a Reagan Democrat whose 2006 upset over one-time GOP star George Allen in Virginia represents the last time Mudcat could claim victory for his “Bubba Strategy.”

Since fallen into disuse, the Bubba Strategy might be the only proven way of getting rural-minded residents of very red states or regions to vote Democratic. It was first road-tested in the state in 2001, when in his landmark run for Virginia governor, Democrat Mark Warner sponsored a truck operated by southwest Virginia’s Wood Brothers Racing team in a NASCAR race, appeared with bluegrass musician Ralph Stanley and slathered the deeply working-class region in “Sportsmen for Warner” signs signaling his support by and for gun owners. Similar tactics were subsequently used by Blue Dog Democrats and other candidates who sought to win rural areas.

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Little more than a decade later, the Bubba Strategy almost feels quaint. Shifting demographics have transformed Virginia into a blue-leaning swing state over the last two presidential election cycles. With fresh numbers of Democratic voters, candidates now believe they only need to get voters to turn out rather than persuade people in red districts. Hence freshman Sen. Tim Kaine, in his successful 2012 race, felt free to ignore Bubba; instead Kaine only had to run up huge margins in the urban crescent around Washington, D.C., without worrying as much about the parts west of Richmond. For similar reasons, President Obama paid even less heed to the rural parts of the state in 2012 than he did in the 2008 campaign.

Saunders, nonetheless, insists that finding a way to identify with the “bubbas”—Southern slang for people of limited means and less education—is not only useful but essential to the Democratic Party’s future throughout the South and rural areas of the country. If the party wants to hold the Senate this year, let alone retake the House of Representatives any time soon, it must travel again down many a country road, at least philosophically, Saunders says.

Dave "Mudcat" Saunders

That’s especially true because the issue of income inequality is emerging as a fundamental Democratic talking point for both 2014 and 2016. Candidates need an effective way to communicate their empathy for the downtrodden without sounding condescending or disingenuous about it—as Hillary Clinton recently found when she made her much-mocked comment about being “dead broke” upon leaving the White House as first lady. “The greatest problem in America is the disintegration of the middle class,” Saunders says, and “unless you’re super-rich, you probably feel like you’re getting screwed. That feeling transcends geography.”

The lines between urban and rural are blurring physically as well. “There’s too much emphasis paid on geography, on class,” Saunders says. “The pied piper of greed has moved everybody to the big cities. America’s become more concentrated. There are as many rednecks—or let me say it like this, rural-thinking people—on Route 1 in Alexandria as there are in all five coal-producing counties of Virginia.” If the growth of cities is fueled by new residents who bring their rural culture along with them, then the new conventional wisdom that these demographic trends favor Democrats doesn’t necessarily hold. In fact, the rise of the exurbs and the expansion of ever-larger metropolitan areas into the countryside have contributed to a blending of cultures, rendering voter patterns less predictable.

It thus stands to reason that speaking the language of the new American underclass—which sometimes seems to include just about everyone but the super-rich—requires understanding and respecting rural culture. Even if Democratic candidates support policies that would benefit people facing hard times, they may not get their votes if they don’t make an authentic effort to identify with them. It is a tactic that Warner, a wealthy high-tech entrepreneur from northern Virginia, mastered in winning his Senate seat—and which has also made him a perennial mention for higher office. “Mark Warner was not from the culture,” says Saunders. “You don’t have to be from the culture. But Mark enjoyed the culture and he respected the culture. That’s the deal. You can’t be disingenuous about it.” Saunders once took Warner turkey hunting, and when they came out of the woods the media was waiting for them. “They asked me how Mark did, and I said, ‘Hell, he sounded like an elephant going through the woods.’ But he had a great time and immediately said he wanted to do that again.”

Steve Jarding, Warner’s former campaign manager and Saunders’ old partner in politics, says that even if Warner didn’t know all that much about the favorite pursuits of bubbas, his interest showed that he respected them. “When the Republican critics said, ‘Warner doesn’t go to races, doesn’t listen to bluegrass, doesn’t hunt, our response was, ‘He doesn’t, but you do—and he wants to be governor of all the people, not just the Northern Virginians and military folks but all of Virginia,” says Jarding. “He wants to show you he respects it and he’s not going to dismiss it.”

Having the right candidate matters, though. Unlike her folksy, Arkansas-bred husband, Hillary Clinton’s probably never going to convince anybody she’s a good ol’ boy, just as the French-speaking, windsurfing John Kerry didn’t in 2004. “It’s just too easy to say if you go out to the culture you’ll get them. Democrats have to understand the culture,” says Saunders. “They have to understand what people go through.”

Though he’s been on the wrong end of election outcomes for the last eight years, Saunders still swaggers with the confidence of someone who knows the way forward—and who believes that he can be the party’s bubba whisperer in coming elections. Saunders cracks the same, nearly decade-old line about how he’s writing “The Half-Assed Christian’s Guide to Living,” and sets up his key points by drawling, “Let me tell you something…” He’s only a wee bit defensive when it comes to the fact that fewer Democrats are using his game plan these days. “The reason a rural or cultural strategy doesn’t work is because it’s not deployed,” he insists.